M

CPM

CPA

cost per 100 impressions

cost per 100 impressions

cost per acquisition

click

cost per acquisition

rich media ad

unified tag

geo targeting

impressions

geo targeting

Case Study DoubleClick Search

search management

conversions

CPC

CPM

mobile

ad serving & trafficking

ad exchange

cost per click

cost per click

cost per 100 impressions

cost per 100 impressions

CPA cost per acquisition

Coming into fashion with DoubleClick Search: Piston boosts ROAS, conversions with inventory-aware campaigns advertiser

real time bidding

remarketing

reservation

above the fold

above the fold

Piston, a bicoastal digital agency in the U.S., is focused on building brand relationships across a spectrum of media channels, including paid search, display, print, television, video, social, and more. They represent a broad range of national clients and brands—among them a retailer that offers trendy apparel and accessories online. In a dynamic retail space, Piston helps their client maintain a “stylish profile,” keeping their campaigns relevant by automatically creating and updating search campaigns using inventoryaware campaigns from DoubleClick™ Search. analytics (site analytics)

dynamic creative

attribution

publisher

search

cross format

transparency

agency

video

audience data

“These days, simply managing paid search programs is not enough to stay competitive. You need to be innovative in how you reach your consumers, precise in how you measure their behavior and highly relevant when you target them,” says Jennifer Johnstone, Senior Performance Marketing Strategist at Piston. geo targeting

geo targeting

interest

To efficiently manage their search campaigns, Piston adopted a variety of workflow features from DoubleClick Search, including bulk interface actions to make big changes at scale, and automated rules to schedule changes to specific ads and keywords, based on custom-definedCPA criteria. audience

verification

control

reporting and analytics

efficiency

However, managing accounts for a popular retail client posed a unique challenge. “The best ad is extremely granular,” Johnstone says. “When you’re working with e-commerce clients that have so many different products, it can be a challenge to update campaigns to reflect that—especially during the busy holidays.” Johnstone recalls one winter when the team worked through the holiday break, manually building out campaigns across their client’s 8,000-plus products to stay on top of changing products and new promotions. With the spring sales season approaching, Piston knew they needed a way to save both time and money. That’s when they turned to DoubleClick Search for a solution. cost per 100 impressions

cost per acquisition

attribution

conversions

mobile

cost per acquisition

work flow

ad exchange

reporting

search management

conversions

mobile

www.pistonagency.com view through conversions

funnel reporting

advertiser

real time bidding

reservation

• A full-service digital agency in San Diego and New York that creates communications between brands and customers based on understanding of commerce, culture and technology analytics (site analytics)

shopping

interest

Goal

attribution

cross channel

dynamic creative

• Automate online campaign management for a popular retailer to keep up with everchanging inventory

Approach search

optimization

unified tag

• Use DoubleClick Search inventoryaware campaigns to automate campaign creation and updates, based on Google Merchant Center feed transparency

audience data

contextual targeting

Results verification

ad serving & trafficking

In three months, Piston saw: • Higher ROAS (51%), CTR (26%), conversion rate (50%) • Time savings of 38 hours through automated management efficiency

reporting and analytics

1 real time bidding

reservation

remarketing

reporting

Case Study Managing retail campaigns in real time Piston adopted inventory-aware campaigns—a campaign management feature from DoubleClick Search that easily integrates with Google Merchant Center to automatically create and update search campaigns, based on a retailer’s current product inventory. “Inventory-aware campaigns allows us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enables us to spend our dollars on more efficient product level keywords, and helps us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds,” Johnstone says. With inventory-aware campaigns, Piston was freed from the cumbersome task of frequently responding to changes in inventory. When the newest prices, descriptions and landing pages were updated in their Google Merchant Center feed, DoubleClick Search applied those changes to Piston’s search campaigns—without any extra work. And in addition to campaign changes, Piston was able to automatically generate new campaigns, bidding down to highly relevant SKU-level and product-level keywords.

Stocking up on time and cost savings with inventory-aware campaigns It wasn’t long before Piston started seeing impressive results. “When we are looking for a partner, the key questions we ask are: Can this save us time, can this save us money, and does it have added features that can really help us impact our bottom line? And with DoubleClick Search inventory-aware campaigns, the answer was always yes.” Johnstone says.

“Inventory-aware campaigns allows us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enables us to spend money on more efficient product level keywords, and helps us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds.” – Jennifer Johnstone, Senior Performance Marketing Strategist, Piston

One quarter, after adopting inventory-aware campaigns, Piston saw a 51% rise in ROAS, a 26% jump in CTR and a 50% boost in conversion rate, compared to manually managed campaigns. In addition, inventory-aware campaigns allowed them to expand keyword coverage on both products and SKUs by 49%. And in time savings, the results were just as impressive. The team estimates that a single ad or keyword change, along with appropriate QA, would take about three minutes to complete. Today these changes are handled automatically by inventoryaware campaigns, which has saved Piston an estimated 38 hours per quarter since implementation. A strong partner, the Piston team is looking forward to working closely with their DoubleClick Search product and services experts to define additional features that will help them succeed in retail, and beyond. “DoubleClick has been a great partner for us,” Johnstone says. “What makes them different is that they have always been willing to listen to us. They will only be better, the more they listen to advertisers who are doing this day to day.”

About DoubleClick Search DoubleClick Search is a search management platform that helps agencies and marketers efficiently manage some of the largest search marketing campaigns in the world, across multiple engines and media channels. Streamlined workflow and powerful reporting features enables buyers to efficiently run campaigns, while strategic bid optimization improves campaign performance. Native integration with the DoubleClick platform allows buyers to manage and track digital campaigns across a single platform, enabling rich, cross-channel buying, reporting and attribution. www.doubleclick.com/search

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